WI: Dreadnaughts and hoovers, other famous firsts give their name to a class

wietze

is this something typical for the english language? in dutch it hardly takes place, yes it happens every now and then, but as regularly as in english
 

Shaby

There are plenty of examples in former Yugoslavia. Toothpaste, for example is still known as kaladont by the name of the company that produced it. Paper tissues were often called Palomas. Calculators are still called digitron and a lot other examples, I can't readily recall.
 

zoomar

One could say "zeppelin" is such a term...usually used for any rigid airship, not just those built by Zeppelin.

Wasn't "PC" an IBM trademark that is commonly used for any personal computer?
 
ennobee

ennobee

zoomar said:
One could say "zeppelin" is such a term...usually used for any rigid airship, not just those built by Zeppelin.
Click to expand...

That would be an alternate history. For much of the early 1900's Count von Zeppelin was facing stiff competition from another German airship designer August Von Parseval. Zeppelin's airships were of rigid construction, big and technically advanced but up to 1910 suffered frkm their own complexity. Parseval's ships were semi-rigid, generally smaller and mostly flew pretty well. However they arrived on the scene just as Zeppelin finally managed to get the last bugs out of his designs.

In another timeline, Parseval's airships arrived five years earlier and as a result he won the 'battle of the German airships'. Today every airship is called a 'parseval' instead of a 'zeppelin'.
 

VictorLaszlo

The term Walkman was a brandname of Sony, but generally used for portable audio cassette players of other brands as well. The same might have happened with the terms iPod for portable mp3-players or iPad for tablet computers.
 

zoomar

ennobee said:
That would be an alternate history. For much of the early 1900's Count von Zeppelin was facing stiff competition from another German airship designer August Von Parseval. Zeppelin's airships were of rigid construction, big and technically advanced but up to 1910 suffered frkm their own complexity. Parseval's ships were semi-rigid, generally smaller and mostly flew pretty well. However they arrived on the scene just as Zeppelin finally managed to get the last bugs out of his designs.

In another timeline, Parseval's airships arrived five years earlier and as a result he won the 'battle of the German airships'. Today every airship is called a 'parseval' instead of a 'zeppelin'.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying, but I think you are mixing refrigerators with toasters. Parseval airships were semi rigid airships, but Parseval neither invented semi-rigid airships nor were they the only semi-rigid airships being built. Zeppelin-style rigid airships were invented by Zeppelin, and the name "zeppelin" came to be commonly used for all rigid airships worldwide, but not all airships. Also, in capability and development potential, zeppelins were a different sort of creation than the Parseval airship. Only people unfamiliar with the design of airships would call a non-rigid or semi-rigid airship a "zeppelin".
 

zoomar

VictorLaszlo said:
The term Walkman was a brandname of Sony, but generally used for portable audio cassette players of other brands as well. The same might have happened with the terms iPod for portable mp3-players or iPad for tablet computers.
Click to expand...

I've also heard people use the term I-phone for any smart phone
 

deLanglade

Well, there is always Rudolph Diesel's legacy, which is pretty much universal in spoken languages worldwide.
And let's not forget Sharpies, which are what we call pretty much any felt-tip pen.
 
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